Ad Mortem
by Daring Dashwood
Summary: Link's hands were stained with the blood, soiled with it, as if he had been the killer. This acursed day would haunt him forevermore. Oot-verse. One-shot.


Ad Mortem

A Zelda Fanfic

Rating: M for war, gore, death, and language

Note: This story takes place in a slight AU, as Castle Town is not attacked when Gannondorf tries to kidnap Zelda. Also, Link was not injured. The rest is solid; the dying soldier was real.

Can you count how many times the word 'blood' pops up?

--

The boy ran through the hallowed town, stumbling, regaining his foothold, and continuing to run. The blue ocarina almost slipped from his sweaty grasp, but he clenched the musical instrument even tighter in his closed fist to prevent it from doing so. He paused, leaning against a house at the edge of the square for a short minute, greedily gulping oxygen for his deprived lungs. Blood started to seep out of the makeshift bandage (a scrap of a frayed end of his tunic) on his left shoulder, his sword arm.

The man on the black horse—Gannondorf, was it?—had hit him square on the shoulder with a powerful bit of magic, rendering all his fighting skills useless. To make matters worse, his sword was lost in the current as he dived down to retrieve the ocarina. So, weaponless, injured, and probably developing hypothermia, Link had no choice but to get to the Temple of Time as quickly as he could. He could merely pray to the goddesses that Gannondorf didn't have any cohorts lurking around near the Temple of Time, or he was fucked.

As his breaths gradually steadied and slowed to their normal pace, Link surveyed the town, drinking in all the death and destruction. His nostrils twitched at the scent that wafted through them, of a mixture of blood, urine, and decay. He could hear the faint moans and cries of the dying as he continued walking, unfazed. The child was not alien to the brutal aspects of death; he himself had murdered countless enemies for his personal gain, and would sometimes watch as their life slipped away from them, his gut twisting in revulsion.

The Hylian soldiers would not allow someone to make off with their princess without a fight; the result was obvious from the second he stepped into the square and got the full view of the heavy damage.

The once proud Hyrule Castle Town was in ruins: the weapons shop had collapsed in on itself; the shooting gallery was slowly burning into a pitiful heap of ash; etc. The elegant and beautiful fountain that lovers used to dance next to was no more: scattered pieces of marble all that was left of the grand monument. Its pure drinking water had been replaced with various splashes of blood, innocent's and soldier's alike, who had been slain in the street, dull eyes open wide with disbelief. Various weapons, such as arrows, spears, and swords were strewn about or lodged firmly in the ground, accompanied by either a decaying corpse or severed limbs, some still twitching.

His legs, no, his whole body was shaking now, something akin to tears streaming down his face. Link fell to the ground, pounding his fist into the stone as he wept, so much so that the skin on his knuckles split open, rivulets of his blood streaming to the ground, adding more to the flowing puddles already formed.

"This…this wasn't supposed to happen! It wasn't supposed to end up like this!" his voice cracked with the raw emotion.

The princess had assured him that if he gathered the three spiritual stones that this madness would never even have the chance to occur, nipped in the bud. He did exactly as he was told, dutifully protecting the innocent from harm and solving their problems as he gathered the stones. So _why was this happening_?

Something rolled over and nudged the hero's foot. He glanced down, wary. A decapitated head of a small child, still warm and fresh, stared back at him, its face twisted in horror. Stuffing down the bile that rose to his throat, Link picked himself up and started walking toward the Temple of Time again, albeit a much quicker pace.

"Hey! Look! There are monsters up ahead!" His fairy chirped in a harsh whisper right next to his ear, causing him to flinch away slightly.

Sure enough, ten or so moblins were just ahead of him near the entrance to the castle, thick globs of saliva dripping down from rotting yellow teeth and onto the cobblestone below. They were fighting a rather one-sided battle with what appeared to be the last few remaining soldiers of the castle. Wounded, tired, and fearful of their inevitable deaths, the men fought honorably as tears cascaded down their grime covered faces, as they uttered their final prayers to the goddesses.

A swell of pride for the men (he thought they were all idiots and lousy guards before now, as he could easily slip past them to visit the princess) coupled with despairing heartbreak exploded in his breast. It hurt to be unable to rescue the brave men, but he had no choice. He was wounded and unarmed; all the suffering this town went through would be for nothing if he died trying to save them.

One moblin seemed to notice him somehow, its pig-like face swiveling on multiple layers of fat that were once called a neck. It emitted a hellish squeal, alerting a few of the others. One soldier caught his eye, his final wish written on his features: run, child. Save yourself while you still can.

Swearing, Link ducked into an alley.

Picking up a sprint again, he attempted to keep his breathing as quiet as possible. The last thing he needed was for those beasts to start chasing after _him_. The three Spiritual Stones jingled inside his pocket while Navi buried herself inside of his hat, unwilling to witness the massacre of Hyrule Castle Town. Just keep your head up and focus on running foreword; don't look at the bodies, don't look at the bodies, don't look at the—

Link suddenly tripped over something, sending him and his fairy splayed out on the hard ground. Navi tumbled out of his hat, yelping indignantly. Rubbing his now aching jaw, the Hylian turned around as he placed the hat back on his head.

He had tripped over one of the town mutts that used to shadow him lovingly under the ethereal glow of the moon. Now it was flayed and its stomach violently ripped open, entrails hanging out in a bloodied lump. Savage teeth marks ravished the dog's body and a half of a disfigured eye that had been ripped out of the socket stared blankly back at Link.

His heart leaped in his throat and he finally vomited, spilling the meager contents of his stomach onto the cobble. He continued retching until he dry heaved, trying to choke back the thick sobs; the horrifying image remained burned into his retinas, refusing to go away. He forced the scream back down his throat, still aware even in his misery of the threat of the moblins.

A cry of pain from his left jerked his head up, blue eyes clouded with trepidation at what horrors he might see next.

A lone soldier had propped himself up against a building, breathing hard and fast as he pressed one hand to a gaping hole through his chest. His other hand still clutched onto his spear defensively, although there was little point to it, as it was all he could do just to remain upright. Link weakly crawled over to him, dizzy from blood loss and the stench of rotting flesh. The soldier gazed down at the boy through his own pain-induced haze, dim recognition sparking in his eyes.

Pale, ashen lips forced themselves open. As they went to form a sentence, blood leaked out from his mouth, reducing the words to wet gurgles. Spitting out the majority of the liquid, the Hylian started to speak in a hoarse, scratchy croak that was barely intelligible, even to Link's hypersensitive ears.

"Unnngh...are you the boy from the forest...? I-I-I've finally met you… I-I-I have something to t-t-tell you..."

The man stopped with a pained groan as more of his lifeblood slipped through his paling fingers, dyeing his uniform a deep sanguine.

"Gannondorf, the Gerudo King of Thieves, betrayed our King... Zelda's nanny, Impa, sensed danger and escaped from the castle with our Princess..."

The man stopped the useless endeavor to stanch the bleeding, and lifted the feeble, stained hand to the rim of Link's eye, which was slick and wet from the boy's tears. The soldier gave the hero a small, fatherly smile as he weakly wiped away some of the moisture, only to have it immediately replaced. He eventually withdrew his hand, blood now trailing from the boy's eye to the length of his face, gently sloping off as it reached his chin.

"I tried to stop Gannondorf's men from chasing them… but…The Princess was... waiting for a boy from the forest... that's you... She wanted to give something to the boy... If you received it from the Princess, hurry... to the Temple of Time...."

The Hylian soldier gave a shuddering gasp, and then went limp, the spear slipping from his hand and into the puddle of his own blood.

Silence, then—

"N-no. This—this can't—"

"Link…"

"No…nonononoNO!" he whipped his head fiercely in denial, and pressed his hands to the still bleeding wound in the man's chest. Blood oozed out from between his small hands as the applied as much pressure as he could. His left shoulder screamed with pain but he paid it no heed, even as it started to trail down his arm.

Navi approached the boy cautiously, her eyes full of pity and unshed tears. Sweet Nayru, he was only a _child_.

"Link…" she called again, softly.

But the boy merely laughed shakily, numb to all but the freshly dead man in front of him.

"H-haha. That's very fuh-funny sir. You can s-s-stop pla-puh-playing, now…hey, this isn't funny! Please, please stop it! Oh, Farore, please just wake up!" His throat cracked and bled as his denial became hysteria.

This wasn't how it was supposed to work. Link returned with the stones, as promised, and then Princess Zelda would help him stop Gannondorf and his evil schemes, and then he'd be able to return to the safe and humble abode of the Kokiri. Peace would reign as he played with Saria in the forest, his adventure in the outside world soon becoming naught but a vague, distant memory. No one was supposed to _die_. Yes, he killed monsters, but they were _different_. He had to kill them, or they would kill him. But no _human being _was supposed to… that's why none of this was really happening, why this is just some sick nightmare; this soldier, this unknown man, was actually at home sleeping off a hard days work, and Hyrule Castle Town was not the location of a brutal genocide of the Hylian race. Yes, that's what was really happening. This was all just some horrible, horrible dream.

But then the rational part of his mind lashed out, reminding him that happy endings were only for the make believe fairy tales meant as bedtime stories for children, and nothing more. Reality was not nearly so pretty.

"Link, we have to go now." Her voice was wavering; it was all she could do to keep her composure as she fluttered next to the boy, whose innocence was freshly ripped from him.

"You need to snap out of it. You have to realize that he's— that he's not—" Her throat constricted and she choked on the words.

Trembling madly, Link lifted his shaking, bloodied hands to his face, staring listlessly at them through tear-blurred eyes. His hands were stained with it, soiled with it, as if he had been the killer. They were forever dyed red; no amount of soap or water would ever wash it away. It would haunt him forevermore, these tainted hands, this dreadful night.

"He's not moving anymore."

Link screamed.

-Fin-

No, I'm not insane and have an insatiable bloodlust: this story made me sick to my stomach as I wrote it. As I explained above, this is different from the actual game, but I really don't think that Gannondorf could storm Hyrule Castle on his huge dark horse and there not be a full scale battle between the soldiers and him. So I surmised that he would bring moblins to deal with the men as he chased after Zelda.

I couldn't resist writing about the dying soldier in the back alley, I just couldn't. It was probably the saddest moment in the game; Navi's comment in the end always sent chills up my spine. Also, I didn't make up the man's words—they are true to the original dialogue.

Sorry it's so short. It was originally going to go until he opens the door to the sacred realm, but I felt it was better to cut it off there.

-bleu-blizzard-


End file.
